Reckless Abandonment
by kbird213
Summary: Sometimes the pain is present with or without the source. Somewhat AU, but still Dramoine, so Read and Review pleases!
1. Chapter 1

Howdy! I can't decide if I want to continue with this story or just leave it as the sad little thread that it is; so I'm leaving it up to you lovely peoples XD If ya like the idea, let me noes! If not, glare angrily at the screen for a while, and then hit the magical "back" button! Yay!

Disclaimer is on my profile page, but in case you were wondering…No. I don't own these characters…I just man-nap Draco and make him do terrible things. Terrible, but great! Also, I know this particular piece of the puzzle does not live up to its M rating, but hopefully the later chapters will;)…assuming there are later chapters. Onward and Upward!

Blood red hair and moss green eyes. Those were the only discernable features of the woman snoring loudly beside me. If you could even call her a woman through the incessant sounds she was emitting. I didn't know her name, and the size and shape of her was of little consequence, but I chose her tonight, because she had two very unique features that could NOT be confused with any other color. One didn't look at her hair and think, "that's sort of an orangey-red; it could very well be her natural shade." No, it was as red as spilled blood and there was no doubt that it came from a bottle. No one would look at her eyes and mistake their colour for greenish-grey or even hazel. They were green no matter how you looked at them, because they were coloured contacts and could depict no other shade.

It was because her hair was red (not brown) and her eyes were green (not a russet shade of mahogany, so deep you could lose yourself completely in them) that I decided to give her a whirl. It seemed logical that, unlike other girls, I wouldn't look at her in the midst of passion and suddenly find that her hair had turned brown and curled into a bushy mess or that her acidic green eyes had morphed into a doe-like brown filled with enough vulnerability to make you physically double-over. That perhaps I would remember this girl's name in the few shuddering moments afterward and it wouldn't be _her_ name whispering across my mind, nearly making a full verbal debut through clenched teeth and into the space between me and whoever it was beneath me.

Alas, it would appear that I am ruined for all women, because tonight, like so many others was filled with thoughts of_ her_. Ironic that it only takes one woman to ruin an entire gender, but there it is. I, Draco Malfoy, have officially sworn off women due to the stupidity and callousness of one, lone female.

Fuck you too, Karma, Dearest.

The redhead next to me stirred and made an odd gurgling noise in the back of her throat that interrupted her snoring for the briefest of moments before she settled and the diesel-engine-like sound of her slumbered breathing began again.

I glared at the back of her helmet of pin-straight, crimson hair as though I could simply make her vanish from my sight with nothing but the well-aimed depth of my now-consuming hatred for all females…well, almost all.

The thought occurred to me that I could actually banish her from my bed with a simple reach into the bedside table and a well-aimed flick of the wand, but then_ her_ stupid, incessant voice popped into my head with a nagging, "Draco! It's not fair to use magic on muggles! You can't do that!" Out of sheer masochism, I added the little gasp she always made after I followed up her little scolding with a simple, "make me."

I smiled at the memory. It was a small smile, but it was there before I could consciously halt it. I traced my fingertips along the edges of it before it faded away. Like everything else in my life.

The useless false-ginger stirred again; this time, giving a little cow kick that landed square on my ankle. I stifled the curse that bubbled up in my throat, because Malfoy conduct prohibited such language, and it came out a growl. I reached down to rub the offended appendage, half expecting her to wake-up and start apologizing. She should've (filthy pretender), but she didn't.

Hermione would've.

I winced as a lance of pain shot through my chest at the mere thought of her name. Apparently, I needed to have another chat with my subconscious, because I thought we had agreed that she would forever more be referred to as _her_. My subconscious had yet to get that memo and liked to issue little reminders of the fact that while I refused to speak that she-devil's name aloud, I hadn't forgotten it. Touché subconscious, touché.

I suddenly felt filthy in bed with the flame-haired girl and her naked hip peeking out from the tangled array of covers…and _her_ name still fresh in my mind. I stepped from the bed on my recently bruised ankle and readied the shower for a long overdue cleansing.

I let the water run down my back while I braced my forearms up on the porcelain in front of me. I was probably causing a water shortage somewhere with as much hot water as I was using, but I really couldn't give less of a shit. And fuck her for making me aware of such things! Why did she have to change my perception about bloody EVERYTHING! Sure my views pre-_her_ were a bit small minded, but so was everyone else I knew. And then….she had to come along and change all that; to the point where I couldn't stand the single-mindedness of my peers. People I had called friends for years of my life were now virtual strangers and for what? So that I could be completely alienated from everyone? Even people I just met? I looked back towards the bedroom that housed the insipid 'redhead'…Apparently so.

When the wound was fresh, I believed that was _her_ plan all along. That _she_ wanted me to understand what it meant to be different. To alienate me as a punishment for years spent tormenting her and her little band of gryffindorks, but no. There had been no underlying motive to what she did, which made it hurt all the more. How pathetically Gryffindor of her to work without an ulterior motive.

I slammed my fist into the porcelain and let my hand throb in pain on the cool tile. I stared at it for a while before I realized it didn't really hurt all that much. Not compared to _her_.

_She_ was pain and _she_ hurt like hell.

So there it is. Chapie 1! I realize Draco is drastically out of character, but that's only cuz he has no one to impress in this one…just sorta caught up in his own head. He'll get more Slytherin, I promise! Like all fine wines, maturity is key ;) And Hermione will appear, but just not yet. She hasn't been invited to the party yet, because my owl is out of commission and I had to use a carrier pigeon to send her invite. Face-palm! Read and Review pleases!


	2. Chapter 2

FINALLY UPDATED! It took me a life and a half, but this chapter…. c'est fini! Anywho, Hermoine still hasn't joined the party, but she will soon:D Disclaimer is on my homepage and don't forget to review!

It was pissing rain again. It seemed like it always pissed rain in London. Even when it was sunny out, it was still just pissy. I've always loved London for that reason. No matter where you were in the world, you could be certain that it was pissing rain and generally gloomy in London. There was a certainty in the bleak, gray London sky that I had always been drawn to. It could also be noted that I look like sin in this black suit with the London gray as a backdrop, or so I've been told…twice..by the same homeless woman on the underground. I may love the weather, but there were some aspects of muggle London that I would just never understand.

The suit was nice and finely tailored and all that, but I preferred dress robes to this muggle get-up any day of the week. Necessary evils and all that. It was all part of the very slow and painful process of converting the Malfoy fortune from galleons to the muggle currency of 'pounds'. Strange word, pounds. I had been told that after a few scares at Gringotts, my mother decided it was time to have a bit of money stowed away in case the great wizard bank actually did fall through and our fortune was lost. Five years ago, I would've believed that complete and utter bullocks, but I was a man changed(thanks to _her_) and it only took me three hours of combing through bank records to find the real reason for our sudden need close our Gringotts account.

I found that, what I had thought at the time to be a great show of the mercy of the wizards opposing Voldie towards those who bare the universal tattoo of evil, had actually been a great show of how even the most incorruptible of magic folk could make an exception for money. My father had bribed his way out of a life sentence at Azkaban and had spent more than half my inheritance doing so.

We weren't relocating the money; we were hiding it from my father.

Which brings us, more or less, up to date with me battling the rain and fog of London to make it to the dodgy pawn shop with my pockets filled with galleons. It may have been my idea to exchange the gold to muggle currency with exchange rates being at an all time high, but the whole adventure had put me in a foul mood. These shady back-door dealings went against everything I had been brought up with. We were purebloods; superior in every way. We didn't associate with those beneath our station, simply because we were better than them.

"Everyone has to make a living, Draco. Even your great, great, great grandparents had to do so. You wouldn't have a penny of that fortune if they hadn't put in the hard work just like the rest of us."

I flinched. I didn't mean to, but it happened nonetheless. It had become a horrible trait of my existence to hear her voice in my head whenever I had any semblance of my old self loose in my head. Her voice swept through my thoughts like a fast-acting poison, killing all the Malfoy that was and leaving nothing but the stripped bare and numb Draco in it's wake.

I shook my head vigorously, sending a spray of rain water over my already soaked coat, trying to dispel her voice from my head. I took a spiteful amount of solace in the fact that trading my gold inheritance in for paper inheritance was not the type of "hard work" she had been referring to.

"Insufferable Ferret", her voice whispered back.

I managed a self-depreciating smirk and pushed on through the balmy rain of London. I made it into the cramped, damp, back-alley pawn shop in record time. The balding, elderly gentleman behind the counter gave me his best crooked-tooth grin. His name was Karl. I didn't know much about Karl except that he liked to talk about his wife and that he seemed to like me. I think the treasure of his affection had more to do the fist-fulls of gold I deposited into his care every week than my winning personality.

"Wonderful gloom today, t'isn't it, ?" he asked in his horrible cock-kneed lilt.

"Perfectly wonderful, Karl" I said in my practiced Malfoy drawl. I have no idea why he called me 'silver' and was tempted to ask him, but didn't quite care enough to familiarize myself with the inner workings of Karl's mind. I knew enough about him to call him an acquaintance and that would've been enough to satisfy her sense of my humanity.

I felt the corners of my mouth turn down as I remembered and I made no motion to camouflage it. Karl noticed, but made no comment as I started to remove the gold from my pockets and lay it down for Karl's inspection.

Despite my best intentions to stay out of Karl's head, I found myself asking him anyway. Probably just to fill the silence while he went back to his register and unlocked the bank notes.

"Cuz of yer oora! You may be in the gold trade, but something about yer person jus' reminds me o' silver" he shrugged off his answer as if it should've been obvious to me when I looked in the mirror that I was vaguely reminiscent of silver.

"Interesting" was my one-word reply to his lame observance.

"Ya know, I remember the first time ya walked into my shop, cuz my wife made such a rucuss 'bout how such a silvery soul shouldna be wearing red. She kept pratting 'bout how silvery souls needed dark hues n'such nonsense and best to leave the bright colors to the gold souls. So ever since I'd started calling ya to me wife cuz she said silver needed dark, but that upset her as me words are like to do, an' she said we should be callin' ya . Said ya had more bright silver than dark in ya, she did."

Karl smiled,but it seemed more to himself than to me. I had to strain myself to try and decifer Karl's words, but his story hit so close hime that I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Instead I managed a weak twitch of my lips to signify my amusement while I stuffed the notes into my pockets.

"Didn't know you talked about me Karl, especially to your wife." I smirled when I said it, hoping the tone would come off as joking, but decidedly not trying too hard to do so.

"Oh, I don't , but it seems you and my wife have a mutual friend. Ya see, my wife's friend used to prattle on 'bout a silver-haired man quite a lot so when my wife saw yer through the stockroom, she knew she was him…"

Karl's story was starting to make me sweat. I could feel chills running up my spine and the fine hair at the base of my neck stand on end. I had the worst feeling about who Karl's wife and my mutual friend was and if he said her name out loud, I'm not sure I would be able to stop myself. I might leap the countertop and wring him for every ounce of information he had about her.

"Yes, Indeed, sir. And my wife just loves having acquaintances with ."

I hate to leave this here, but I really felt this needed to be updated I hope to update soon, but if I don't get reviews then I don't get emails and I forget I have a story to work on so please REVIEW! Smooches!


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